E510122A. Poems (1850).
The Guardian, 22 January 1851, pp. 55–56.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 332–336.
The present is certainly, in England, a great age for female writers. In spite of Carter’s Epictetus, and Seward’s Poems, and Hannah More’s Dramas, and Charlotte Smith’s Sonnets, and Madame D’Arblay’s novels, and a lot more of whom we have heard, but whose works we never read, and a still greater number, no doubt, whose very memories trunkmakers and greengrocers have pitilessly destroyed, the last century cannot compare with this in the number, or celebrity, or real powers and abilities, of its fair candidates for literary honours. Whether it is what men call chance, or from the wider spread of general education, or from the greater uniformity that now exists between the training of male and female minds, certain it is that, on the whole, the literary productions of Englishwomen have lately more nearly reached an equality with those of Englishmen than at any former period of our literary history. Indeed, it is, perhaps, from a mistaken notion of that equality, which, in a certain sense, we are glad to concede to them, that our female writers have been led, now and then, to desert those regions wherein their supremacy is unassailable, and to struggle with men upon ground where they are certain of defeat, and where those who respect them most would hardly wish they should succeed. Audax omnia perpeti—the female race has left nothing unattempted. They scale the heights of philosophical theology; break up the hard soil of political economy; and sound the depths of metaphysics. And this, with profound respect for the female character, and for the female intellect, must be regarded as a mistake. It is, perhaps, the greatest mark of refinement in a man, as it generally accompanies true genius, that there should be something feminine (not effeminate) in the features of his face, and the productions of his intellect. But the converse is not true. Women must not be masculine. They are never greater in heart and mind, they never more certainly awaken that enthusiastic reverence which still lingers amongst us as a sacred relic from the days of religious chivalry, than when they display those glorious qualities which belong almost solely to their sex, and show themselves to be most thoroughly and exclusively women. So also is it with literature. We should acknowledge practically the sufficiently obvious physical fact, that the sexes are distinct. Men have their own departments, and women theirs; and each sex, in leaving its own province, becomes only the clumsy and unsuccessful rival of the other. Great exceptions are not to be followed as examples. In spite of Mrs. Somerville, science is best left to Herschel and Faraday; and the example of Miss Martineau should not seduce ladies to attempt the invasion of territories occupied by Ricardo and Mill. On the other hand, no man could have written Miss Austen’s novels, and none, we think, those which are really the finest in Mrs. Browning’s poems. It is their intensely feminine character, as in the great fragment of Sappho, which seems to us to give them their great value, and to make them so remarkable.
We cannot attempt, in a notice such as this, to enter fully upon the interesting subject which is suggested by it. We cannot pretend elaborately to analyse the female mind, and show why women are so much more successful in certain fields of literature than in others. Generally, we may observe that in novels of character, in narrative, and in travels, our modern ladies seem especially at home. Whatever demands quickness of observation, grace of expression, keenness of feeling and perception, and that indescribable delicacy and refinement which marks the well-educated lady, is the peculiar and undisputed province of our modern women. For the most part, they are deficient in power. They have less self-restraint, less simplicity of conception, and (we are speaking only generally) less severe and calm judgment. It is implied in this that, while they may have fancy in a high degree, they are somewhat wanting in the loftier and austerer quality of imagination. And hence female poetry, with all its richness of imagery, vehemence of feeling, and beauty of language, is not often of the highest order, because to the very highest poetry judgment and condensation, severity and reserve, qualities we express by the word power, are absolutely essential. It is a very different thing to express a whole, and picturesquely to enumerate its parts; and while many women are equal to the latter, only a few can rise to the former.
Mrs. Browning, however, is amongst the few in whom, certainly, we have not to remark the want of the great quality of power. In this respect, indeed, whether we regard the force of her conception, or the singular vigour and freshness of her expressions, she rises far above the average of modern poetry, whether by male or female writers. In the more ordinary yet delightful gifts of poets, in melody of verse, in tenderness, in true pathos, in abundant language, command of rhyme, and affluence of imagery, she is quite in the first ranks of living writers. In all her works she evinces marks of a truly poetical mind. If the first conception of some of her clever poems may be traced, with more or less of certainty, to some other source, the detail and execution are always entirely her own, and almost always invest the subject with an air of great originality. If some of her thoughts, and not a few of her images, may be met with elsewhere, at least they have seldom been so strikingly expressed, or so picturesquely grouped. Every where the artist is conspicuous, and generally, we must say, the deeply-feeling and religious lady.
Religious, our readers must remember, after her own kind, which is not exactly our kind, nor a kind that we feel at all disposed to substitute for our own. Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Tennyson, and her husband, Mr. Browning, are her intellectual idols, as the two latter are, to some extent, the models for her poetry. Her own good sense, and instinctive right feeling, preserve her, however, from most of that irreverence on such matters which is at times disagreeable in Mr. Browning, and constantly so offensive in Mr. Carlyle; and it is rather from what is conveyed in a chance expression, than from any very definite or expanded statement, that we gather how far we should probably differ, if we came to a regular discussion upon religious subjects. But, in the present state of religious discord and confusion, we may regret it, but it would be dishonest to be severe upon her because she differs from teaching of which she has most likely never heard, and is deficient in doctrine which she has had no opportunity to supply.
The great merits which we have attributed to Mrs. Browning are, no doubt, qualified by serious faults, which we the more freely note, because they do not interfere with the sincere respect for her genius which we feel and have expressed, and because we are quite sure she can remedy them if she pleases. She is almost uniformly far too diffuse, and weakens the effect of some of her finest passages by the juxtaposition of others far inferior, and for which there was really no occasion, which encumber, without advancing or strengthening her composition. Again, she will not always suffer us to forget her sex, but overwhelms us with the display, we had almost said the parade, of her various learning, at times and in places where the display of it seems to be the only end attained, and where we think an equally learned man would have shown more self-command. Learning, especially classical learning, is best shown in its results. We should know the writing of a really finished scholar, though he never indulged in a quotation, or pointed a sentence with a classical allusion; and, although we are far indeed from the narrow-minded bigotry which would shut up from our women the works of some of the greatest men the world has yet seen, yet their knowledge of them should be collected indirectly from their writings and conversation, and not proclaimed with needless ostentation. Akin to this defect, and resulting from the same source, is the too great straining after effect observable in Mrs. Browning, the want of calmness and repose, the unreality of thought and extravagance of expression, in a word, the affectation which now and then interferes unpleasantly with our full enjoyment of her poetry. She will sometimes mar the effect of a beautiful poem by an absurd phrase, which is generally bad English, and always in bad taste. Thus, in “Bertha in the Lane,” a most beautiful and feeling poem, the unhappy line “I fell flooded with a Dark” (for darkness, we suppose,) spoils a very pathetic passage, and provokes a smile very much out of harmony with the emotion excited by the rest of it. Other instances are at hand, but her readers will detect them soon enough for themselves; and as they are mere perversities in a great poetess, it is sufficient to call attention to them, and leave it to her good sense to apply the remedy.
In these two volumes the poems of the greatest effort and highest pretension are those which seem to us the least successful. The “Drama of Exile,” “the Seraphim,” “Prometheus Bound,” “the Poet’s Vision,” and even “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship;” clever and powerful as they are, especially the last, are yet less perfect and pleasing, and have more in them that offends a fastidious taste than those in which the flight is lower but more steadily and unfailingly maintained. Some of these latter are almost perfect, and unite the power and restraint of man’s writing with the tenderness, grace, and passion of a woman’s. We can afford space only for a few specimens, and a few remarks upon them. “The Poet’s Vow” is one of our chief favourites. It is evening—
The rowers lift their oars to view
Each other in the sea;
The landsmen watch the rocking boats
In a pleasant company,
While up the hill go gladlier still
Dear friends by two or three.
The peasant’s wife hath looked without
Her cottage door, and smiled,
For there the peasant drops his spade
To clasp his youngest child,
Which hath no speech, but its hands can reach
And stroke his forehead mild.
The poet makes a vow to forswear mankind, and live alone with nature in an old ruined hall. A grand scene follows, in which, having given all his wealth away, he tries to persuade his best friend and his own betrothed lady to marry one another, take his lands, and live together, and forget him. They reject his offer, and in vain attempt to move his strong resolution. He goes and lives alone; and Rosalind, his love, dies broken-hearted. We must make room for her death:—
In death sheets lieth Rosalind,
As white and still as they;
And the old nurse that watched her bed,
Rose up with “Well-a-day!”
And oped the casement to let in
The sun, and that sweet doubtful din
Which droppeth from the grass and bough
Sans wind and bird—none knoweth how—
To cheer her as she lay.
The old nurse started when she saw
Her sudden look of woe!
But the quick wan tremblings round her mouth
In a meek smile did go;
And calm she said, “When I am dead,
Dear nurse, it shall be so.
“Till then, shut out those sights and sounds,
And pray God pardon me,
That I without this pain, no more
His blessed works can see!
And lean beside me, loving nurse,
That thou mayst hear, ere I am worse,
What thy last love should be.”
The loving nurse leant over her,
As white she lay beneath;
The old eyes searching, dim with life,
The young ones dim with death.
To read their look, if sound forsook
The trying, trembling breath.—
“When all this feeble breath is done,
And I on bier am laid,
My tresses smoothed, for never a feast,
My body in shroud arrayed;
Uplift each palm in a saintly calm,
As if that still I prayed.
“And heap beneath mine head the flowers
You stoop so low to pull;
The little white flowers from the wood,
Which grow there in the cool;
Which he and I, in childhood’s games,
Went plucking, knowing not their names,
And filled thine apron full.
“Weep not! I weep not. Death is strong;
The eyes of Death are dry;
But lay this scroll upon my breast
When hushed its heavings lie;
And wait awhile for the corpse’s smile
Which shineth presently.
“And when it shineth, straightway call
Thy youngest children dear,
And bid them gently carry me
All barefaced on the bier—
But bid them pass my kirkyard grass
That waveth long anear.
“And up the bank where I used to sit
And dream what life would be,
Along the brook, with its sunny look
Akin to living glee;
O’er the windy hill, through the forest still,
Let them gently carry me.
“And through the piney forest still,
And down the open moorland—
Round where the sea beats mistily
And blindly on the foreland—
And let them chant that hymn I know,
Bearing me soft, bearing me slow,
To the old hall of Courland.
“And when withal they near the hall,
In silence let them lay
My bier before the bolted door,
And leave it for a day:
For I have vowed, though I am proud,
To go there as a guest in shroud,
And not be turned away.”
The old nurse looked within her eyes,
Whose mutual look was gone:
The old nurse stooped upon her mouth,
Whose answering voice was done;
And nought she heard, till a little bird
Upon the casement’s woodbine swinging,
Broke out into a loud sweet singing,
For joy o’ the summer sun.
“Alack! alack!”—she watched no more—
With head on knee she wailed sore;
And the little bird sang o’er and o’er
For joy o’ the summer sun.
At last the poet’s resolution fails too; his human heart avenges itself upon him, and he dies upon the bier of Rosalind.
The “Romaunt of Margret” is a very original and imaginative ballad, in point of conception equal to anything of Mrs. Browning’s. “Isobel’s Child” is full of feeling; the remonstrance of an infant with its mother, who had saved its life by her prayers, and who is yet with breaking heart prevailed upon to let it die and go [to] heaven. Most of our readers will probably be familiar with the “Romaunt of the Page,” “the Lay of the Brown Rosary,” and “The Rhyme of the Duchess May,” from the former edition of Mrs. Browning’s poems. None of her writings are so popular, and few deserve it more. Full of romantic feeling and religious spirit, lofty in aim, and richly ornamented, nervous in expression and melodious in rhythm, these poems well deserve all that has been said in their praise. The “Lay of the Brown Rosary” is the finest of them; yet, for the sake of its closing passage, we must find room for the last scene of the “Romaunt of the Page:”—
She looketh up, in earth’s despair,
The hopeful heavens to seek:
That little cloud still floateth there,
Whereof our Loved did speak.
How bright the little cloud appears!
Her eyelids fall upon the tears,—
And the tears, down either cheek.
The tramp of hoof, the flash of steel—
The Paynims round her coming!
The sound and sight have made her calm,
False page, but truthful woman!
She stands amid them all unmoved:
The heart, once broken by the loved,
Is strong to meet the foeman.
“Ho, Christian Page! art keeping sheep,
From pouring wine cups, resting?”—
“I keep my master’s noble name,
For warring, not for feasting:
And if that here Sir Hubert were,
My master brave, my master dear,
Ye would not stay to question.”
“Where is thy master, scornful page,
That we may slay or bind him?”—
“Now search the lea, and search the wood,
And see if ye can find him!
Nathless, as hath been often tried,
Your Paynim heroes faster ride
Before him than behind him.”
“Give smoother answers, lying page,
Or perish in the lying.”—
“I trow that if the warrior brand
Beside my foot, were in my hand,
’Twere better at replying.”
They cursed her deep, they smote her low,
They cleft her golden ringlets through:
The Loving is the Dying.
She felt the scimitar gleam down,
And met it from beneath,
With smile more bright in victory
Than any sword from sheath,—
Which flashed across her lip serene,
Most like the spirit-light between
The darks of life and death.
Ingemisco, Ingemisco!
From the convent on the sea,
Now it sweepeth solemnly!
As over wood and over lea,
Bodily the wind did carry
The great altar of St. Mary,
And the fifty tapers paling o’er it,
And the Lady Abbess stark before it,
And the weary nuns, with hearts that faintly
Beat along their voices saintly—
Ingemisco, ingemisco!
Dirge for abbess laid in shroud,
Sweepeth o’er the shroudless Dead,
Page or lady, as we said,
With the dews upon her head,
All as sad if not as loud.
Ingemisco, ingemisco!
Is ever a lament begun
By any mourner under sun,
Which, ere it endeth, suits but one?
As an example of her calm and easy power take the following beautiful poem:—
Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist’s music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this—
“He giveth His beloved sleep?”
What would we give to our beloved?
The hero’s heart, to be unmoved,
The poet’s star-tuned harp, to sweep,
The patriot’s voice, to teach and rouse,
The monarch’s crown to light the brows?
“He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith, all undisproved,
A little dust, to overweep,
And bitter memories, to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake.
“He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
“Sleep soft, beloved!” we sometimes say,
But have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep:
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber, when
“He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delvëd gold, the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o’er it fall!
God makes a silence through you all,
And “giveth His beloved, sleep.”
His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap.
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
“He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
Yea, men may wonder while they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man,
Confirmed, in such a rest to keep;
But angels say—and through the word
I think their happy smile is heard—
“He giveth his beloved, sleep.”
For me, my heart that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the jugglers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose,
Who “giveth his beloved, sleep!”
And, friends, dear friends,—when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one, most loving of you all,
Say, “Not a tear must o’er her fall—
He giveth His beloved, sleep.”
Of her pathos, the following, called “the Mask:”—
I have a smiling face, she said,
I have jest for all I meet;
I have a garland for my head,
And all its flowers are sweet,—
And so you call me gay, she said.
Grief taught to me this smile, she said,
And Wrong did teach this jesting bold;
These flowers were plucked from garden-bed
While a death-chime was tolled—
And what now will you say?—she said.
Behind no prison-grate, she said,
Which slurs the sunshine half a mile,
Are captives so uncomforted,
As souls behind a smile,
God’s pity let us pray, she said.
I know my face is bright, she said,—
Such brightness, dying suns diffuse!
I bear upon my forehead shed,
The sign of what I lose,—
The ending of my day, she said.
If I dared leave this smile, she said,
And take a moan upon my mouth,
And tie a cypress round my head,
And let my tears run smooth,—
It were the happier way, she said.
And since that must not be, she said,
I fain your bitter world would leave.
How calmly, calmly, smile the Dead,
Who do not, therefore, grieve!
The yea of Heaven is yea, she said.
But in your bitter world, she said,
Face-joy’s a costly mask to wear,
And bought with pangs long nourished
And rounded to despair.
Grief’s earnest makes life’s play, she said.
Ye weep for those who weep?—she said—
Ah fools!—I bid you pass them by;
Go, weep for those whose hearts have bled,
What time their eyes were dry!
Whom sadder can I say?—she said.
But of all poems, the most wonderful for depth of feeling, grandeur of language, and all that transcends criticism by its genius, is “the Cry of the Children.” It is too long to print entire. We give some portions of it:—
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,—
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west—
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!—
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?—
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago—
The old tree is leafless in the forest—
The old year is ending in the frost—
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest—
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man’s grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy—
“Your old earth,” they say, “is very dreary;”
“Our young feet,” they say, “are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary—
Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,—
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old.
“True,” say the young children, “it may happen
That we die before our time.
Little Alice died last year—the grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her—
Was no room for any work in the close clay;
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
Crying, ‘Get up, little Alice! it is day.’
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries!—
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes,—
And merry grow her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime! [p. 56→]
It is good when it happens,” say the children,
“That we die before our time.”
. . . . . . .
“For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning.—
Their wind comes in our faces,—
Till our hearts turn,—our head, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places—
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling—
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall—
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling—
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.—
And all day, the iron wheels are droning:
And sometimes we could pray,
‘O ye wheels,’ (breaking out in a mad moaning)
‘Stop! be silent for to-day!,’”
. . . . . . .
And well may the children weep before you;
They are weary ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun:
They know the grief of man, but not the wisdom;
They sink in man’s despair, without its calm—
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,—
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm,—
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly
No dear remembrance keep,—
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly:
Let them weep! let them weep!
They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,
For they mind you of their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity;—
“How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart,—
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants,
And your purple shows your path;
But the child’s sob curseth deeper in the silence
Than the strong man in his wrath!”
And here we pause. We have not nearly exhausted our quotations. Numbers of poems lie before us which we wish our readers could have before them, that they might see how far we have been from exaggerating Mrs. Browning’s merits, and what a true poetess we have still amongst us. We desire to part from her with words of respectful admiration, and with the expression of a hope that she has yet a glorious career before her, and that what she produces will be more and more perfect fruit of those splendid powers with which she has been so lavishly endowed.
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1850.
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